What lesser known free and open source software do you use daily to improve your life?
What lesser known free and open source software do you use daily to improve your life?
For me it is the note taking/PKMS tool SilverBullet.
Errm, Wireshark. Please bear with me.
Wireshark is a shining example of an open source project completely and utterly crapping on the closed source competition. As a result we all benefit. I recall spending a lot of someone else's money on buying a sort of ruggedized laptop with two ethernet ports to do the job back in the day.
Nowdays, I can run up a tcpdump session on a firewall remotely with some carefully chosen timings and filters and download it to my PC and analyse it with Wireshark.
OK, all so convenient but is it any use?
Say you have a VoIP issue of some sort. The PCAP from tcpdump that you pass to Wireshark can analyse it to the nth degree. Wireshark knows all about SIP and RTP (and IAX) and you can even play back the voice streams or have them graphed so you can see what is wrong or whatever. That's just VoIP, it has loads of other dissectors and decorators built in.
So what?
The UK (for example) will be dispensing with boring old, but reliable, POTS (Plain Old Telephony System) by 2025. Our entire copper telephony and things like RedCare (defunct soon) will go away.
We are swapping out circuit switching for packet switching. To be fair, a lot of the backend is already TCP/UDP/IP that is shielded away from us proles. When SoGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access) really kicks in then the old school electric end to end connection will be lost in favour of packet switching, which never fails (honest guv).
If you are an IT bod of any sort, you really should be conversant with Wireshark.
- LibreWolf, a privacy-optimized fork of Firefox
- Mull, hardened Firefox for Android.
- EteSync with self-hosted Etebase, an end-to-end encrypted solution for syncing calendars and contacts.
- Molly, a hardened Signal fork for Android.
- Accrescent, a secure, alternative app store for Android. Still in an early stage of development though.
- UnifiedPush, a privacy-friendly notification system.
- LibRedirect, a browser extension that automatically redirects you to private frontends for privacy invasive websites.
- movie-web, a web app that let's you watch any movie/tv show for free. I highly recommend it.
- Seal, an amazing Android app for downloading videos. YTDLnis is an alternative.
- Cobalt downloader, a website that let's you download basically everything imaginable from the internet. All kinds of posts, photos and videos from various social media platforms and many other websites.
- Linkwarden, a bookmark manager that can be self-hosted. Also check out Omnivore and wallabag.
- ArchiveBox, a self-hosted app for archiving websites.
- Tube Archivist, a self-hosted app for archiving YouTube videos/playlists/channels.
(I love downloading and archiving stuff lol)
I'll try to keep this to lesser known apps:
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Catima (saves barcodes for gift cards, gym memberships, etc so you don't have to worry about the physical card)
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Cofi (nice timer for active guidance through coffee brewing recipes)
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10,000 Sentences (a language practicing app that doesn't have a mildly threatening owl 😉)
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OSMAnd+ Mapillary, Overlay Maps, and 3D Features (seriously, the best. I only use Google maps to get around traffic these days since, unfortunately, Magic Earth doesn't work very well in my area)
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Obtanium (as a gateway to lesser known software, no shipping to an app store required!)
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RethinkDNS (an absolutely amazing piece of software that gives you fine-grained control of the domains your apps are talking to. A bit of a battery sync but it's been a game changer for me. On my GrapheneOS setup I use it in the Google sandbox to reduce the amount of data scraping servers my Google apps can talk to)
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Gadgetbridge lets you connect and get data from supported smart or fitness watch without manufacturers app. Completely local.
Borg for backup. I'm really surprised it's not more widely known. It's an incredible piece of software.
Also, not really lesser known software, but a lesser known feature of file systems including the ones we use in FOSS operating systems: extended file attributes - useful to add metadata to files without modifying them.
pivpn for wireguard setup:
newpipe and libretube for youtube:
And the entire Fossify app suite in Android:
scrcpy for connecting to my Android screen from my laptop:
kde connect for general android/laptop connectivity:
Paperless has taken me from various stacks of important documents strewn around my apartment, to having all of these things nicely organised and searchable.
Logseq pkm note taking/outliner https://github.com/logseq/logseq Syncthing https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing Omnivore, Pocket alternative https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore Bypass Paywalls Clean browser addon https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean
Open source AI models and tools like HuggingChat, Whisper
Shotcut helped me get rid of the heavy, bloated Premiere Pro.
rclone - you can use cheapest cloud or s3 provider and sync encrypted data. Syncthing - sync across devices.
- RiMusic basically saves me about 6 bucks a month from spotify subscription lol
- Droid-Ify much better interface to F-Droid
- Grayjay newpipe but with much better ui, worth nothing is developed by louis rousmann
- NixOS not necessarily improve my daily life but i've been having a really good time trying it recently
Android
Audile like SoundHoud and Shazam but open source
Funkwhale a federated cloud community music streamer app
Innertune find new songs from YT Music
Open Video Editor edit videos
Heliboard successor of OpenBoard
Tubular successor of NewPipe
ZipXtract a zip extractor
Wger fitness app
Please just a reminder, consider contributing to these apps developers.
- ShareX
- Fan Control must have for windows 10/11. FOSS
Loop habit tracker app on android: https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits
They are in the google play store and f-droid i believe
ddcutil is a daily driver for me, lightweight, hyper compatible, full monitor control. I primarily use it to lower brightness at night but also constantly switching inputs with simple macros so I can share multiple monitors with multiple systems.
I use DokuWiki for my personal wiki. Very easy to use.
It’s project management software made by and for worker cooperatives. It’s useful for any kind of organization where you want to be able to scale without introducing management hierarchy, want members to be able to come and go, and just generally value transparency and spontaneity.
naps2 for printer/scanners. Better than anything I've used for scanning. Also great for arranging small documents.
- lets you rearrange page order easily before saving the scan as a pdf
- has OCR
- lets you import documents into the pdf so you can layer scanned notes/typed documents easily into a single doc
- quick interface
Software that comes with printer/scanners usually suck
I switched from Mint.com to the FOSS Money Manager EX for desktop a while ago and couldn't be happier.
Barrier: https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
Edit: Input Leap looks like a promising KVM replacement for Barrier, thanks for sharing!
LogSec for students, project organization, and the aspiring corkboard conspiracy theorist in your life wanting to be the next Mark Lombardi. Use markdown in a free flow style notes app that has powerful tools to connect ideas, so you can focus on the information as opposed the organization. Semantics instead of syntax, as it were.
My favourite program is CherryTree notes. It's a hierarchical notes app which supports hyperlinking between nodes and to external files, URLs etc. I pretty much use it to organise my whole life! You can have it encrypted and make your own theme as well.
KDE itinerary. Keeps track of all my train tickets, airline tickets, hotel bookings, etc... all offline. This is quite handy, especially for via rail in Canada as often internet can be sketchy when you need to bring up your tickets.
Immich is the must for self-hosting photos. Bye Google.
Kotatsu and Mira, both on F-Droid. Kotatsu makes it easier to read manga without a subscription and you can add your own DRM-free manga. Mira is similar but adds anime and K-drama streaming as an option as well.
Even though I am subbed to Crunchyroll, having an option to watch if I have to cancel to save money, that's very helpful.
Secure file sending: croc
Dedjplication: Czkawka
Sorting tool: Phockup
OCR: OCRmyPDFNebula, the overlay network thing. It connects all of my servers together, and me to my servers.
ChimeraOS. If you have a non-steam gamerdeck, I recommend backing up the Windows 11 install and replacing it with this outright. It's based on the Steam Deck OS and makes the process of selecting a game much faster because Windows 11 is bloated as shit.
Android
- Podcini
- deku sms
- carrion
- linksheet
- florisboard beta
- gptassist
- grayjay
- [mastodon, lemmy, peertube] redirect
- markor
- german only: kleine wettervorschau, öffi
- saveto... + shelter/island
- wormhole, localsend: sending files over internet or local wifi (when creating a hotspot it works without wifi too)
SC-Controller, although it seems to have been abandoned.
Gpodder-adaptive
I use the Unison file sync tool to keep backups of all my important files on flash drives and servers. For mobile devices I do use Syncthing because MTP is painfully slow and taking the SD card out of the device to plug it in is too much of a hassle, but I would rather use Unison.
I live and die by Simplenote. It's one of the apps I'm in multiple times per day every day of my life.
Helix text editor has been in my rotation recently, I like it a lot as a regular nvim user.
Just migrated from Arch to NixOS recently. Nix+Flakes+Home-manager define my entire system, including config files and pinned package versions, using three files. My system has never felt more stable and reproducible. I even found a flake which lets you declaratively manage Flatpaks (nix-flatpak).
Powerful mapping and geographic analysis software.
I got a Brother embroidery machine only to find that making anything other than the most basic patterns required a very pricey proprietary program. Thankfully I found Ink/Stitch, an open source plug-in for InkScape. It's still a little rough around the edges, but after getting used to its foibles, it's very capable with the right amount of elbow grease. The main dev is active and very helpful in their issues.
I used to use [a Windows 3.1 shrink-wrapped software package] that offered notepads and appointment calendars. Then I switched to Linux. That was 16 years ago. To take the place of the Windows application, I had to write my own list-maker from scratch. Today, there's a new python3-pyqt5 version (under GNU General Public License) of my script for Linux and Windows desktops to help maintain the equivalent of index-card files. Obviously this is not something you'd use just to be like everybody else. I use it because I don't really know how others handle their everyday lists and I can't think of an easier way. If you, too, suspect it ought to be easier than it is, it may be. Please look at Tonto2. Thanks.
Hammerspoon. Pretty necessary Mac software to make it work the way you want.
I've tried other calculators & just keep coming back to this one.
It's niche as hell, but Syncplay lets you sync up the playback of video files through VLC or MPV player as long as everyone has the same video file stored locally. Better quality then steaming and works on low bandwidth connections.
Wox + built-in Everything search is incredibly quick and powerful
Muplex - a soft multiplexer I use to shuttle navigation & SDR data on my sailboat (Navigatrix distro).
I'm looking for an alterntive to this for windows. If anyone knows people lemme know.
uget download manager, aves mobile image viewer
coffee keeps display awake
Grisbi, for finances.
Daily
- flameshot for screenshot with annotations
- quodlibet for playing music (nice GUI, scriptable with python - wrote a few myself)
Occasionally
- czkawa for deduplication
- manuskript for writing
- tuxguitar for guitar tabs
Dunno how known they are, but it took me a while to find them.
Space sniffer http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/
It was on life hack.com a decade ago. Literally haven’t seen a single app beat this one.